Still Here
by TLOUSurvivor
Summary: This story picks up from right after the exchange between Joel and Ellie at the end of 'The Last of Us.' Ending the game the way they did was perfect, but just in case you want a less ambiguous ending (e.g. happy ending), here it is. (Spoilers I don't own the characters.) Updated with a new chapter!
1. Chapter 1

**Still Here**

"Okay."

Joel turned back around. He closed his eyes. _Okay_. The word hung in the air and didn't seem like it would ever fall back to earth. He started walking towards Tommy's settlement. Every so often he would glance back to check on Ellie. _Still there. But for how long?_

She hadn't said a word. No humming, no whistling, no jokes. Not even a question about "the old days." Silence was usually something he valued in this world of clickers and gunshots, but it was eating away at him now. Joel stopped.

"What?" Ellie asked.

"It's uh...my stomach. It's aching bad. Guess it still hasn't fully healed," he said, sheepishly.

"Here, let me take a look." Ellie walked over to where he was kneeling. _She still cares. After __that line of __obvious bullshit. God bless this girl._

Ellie rolled up his shirt to take a look at where that pipe burst through all those months ago. "Seems okay, no infection. Doesn't seem to be as bad as it was in...Winter." Ellie barely ever spoke about that past winter, and just this slight mention of it made her shiver.

Joel regretted the conversation going there. "Maybe it's just my age then. Old as shit, right," he offers, hoping to take her mind off that animal David. Nothing. Joel took a few sips of warm water from his travel pack and rubbed his eyes. _Okay_.

"Listen, Ellie." Biting her lip, she sits down next to Joel.

"Yeah?"

"You know that I would never do anything to hurt you."

"Uh-huh."

"And I know that I'm not technically your father, but goddammit. I feel like you're my daughter, regardless of blood. Being with you this past year has been the only light in my life since Sarah passed."

Ellie sighed deeply. "I feel the same way too Joel. But-"

"Let me just finish my bit here," Joel interrupted. "Then you can tell me what you think; what you really think."

Ellie nods at this last statement cautiously. _Please don't say it_.

"In the sewers outside the hospital, when you nearly drowned. The Firefly guards, they wouldn't let me resuscitate you or even help me to. They knocked me out cold and took both of us in. Ellie, I tell you, at that exact moment before I blacked out, it felt like 20 years ago with Sarah. Helpless. Hopeless. I wanted to die instead of losing you like I lost her."

Joel stands up at this point and begins pacing. "I wake up inside of the hospital and Marlene and her soldiers are there, and it's like they don't care about you or what you've been through. What I've been through. I know Marlene is a family friend of yours, but nothing I heard from her at that point made any damn sense. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, hell, I didn't go to college. But I do know that sacrificing your life for something not at all guaranteed to work; hell, knowing this world, an actual vaccine wouldn't stand a chance at being properly used anyway. We've seen the shit that's out there. Some of 'em want to bite you, some of 'em want to murder you. Some..." He stiffened up as that sentence lingered. "Look, this world lost its chance for salvation a long time ago. Not even a miracle cure can stop all that. It's over."

Ellie pensively looked at the ugliness on her arm, sweeping her fingers against that awful touch.

"I did the best I could. It's all I've ever done," Joel continued. "And it's all I'll ever do. Now if you can't accept that, and you want me to go screw off, well then, I don't know what to tell you. I can live with you hating me. But I can't live with you dead."

"Fucking hell," Ellie whispered. "What do you want me to say to that? What, you want me to thank you?"

"I want you to let me continue being a part of your life. I'm not looking for forgiveness or gratitude. Just let me stay with you. You're all I have in this world," explained Joel.

"Son of a bitch. Oh gee, thanks for that additional guilt, Joel, like I didn't already have enough of it!" exclaimed Ellie, glaring at _this goddamn lying asshole that __I__ totally will never leave. _"This whole trek we've taken from Boston to fucking Pittsburgh and Utah by foot...what did we accomplish? Huh? How many times did we almost die or worse? And now it doesn't mean jack shit!" Ellie furiously kicked a rock towards the nearby ravine.

"I'll tell you what it means," replied Joel. "You want to honor those that died? Don't commit suicide. Don't be a martyr. Putting your life into the Fireflies' hands or whatever the hell other horse-shit cult is out there? That's just stupid. You want your life to have meaning? THIS is it," Joel shouts, pointing at Tommy's settlement. "A chance at a real life. Friends. Family. Growing up and living your goddamn life. You may think you owe something to humanity because you're immune. You don't. That's just some poetic line fed to you by Marlene and others. Humanity was always fucked up. It just took the Infection to finally shine the light on it."

Joel walked over to Ellie and placed his hands on her shoulders. "Your death isn't your gift to the world. Your life is." Joel chuckled, "you are the biggest pain in the ass I've ever met." Ellie caught herself as she nearly giggled at this. "But I gotta say, it's that personality that gets me up in the morning. It's that resourcefulness and heart that everyone you meet is in awe of. That is what will save us. Not your brain under a goddamn microscope."

Joel exhaled with the weight of his conscience finally eased. "I've done some shit in my life I'm not proud of. But doing this; I'd do it again. No hesitation." He paused. "Alright, that's it. That's all I had to say."

Ellie looked off towards the dam.She thought about asking him to explain what ultimately happened to Marlene and the others at the hospital. _Did he kill all of them?_ She frowned, then shook her head. _Fucking Joel. _Ellie turned towards him. "Let's go, old man. And you'd better fucking sing."

Joel laughed – truly laughed – for the first time in years. He picked up his backpack and starting walking. The gates were getting closer. He looked over at his baby girl, her red hair flying around in the fresh spring air. _She__ may never forgive me. But fuck it. She's still here._


	2. Chapter 2: The Watch

**The Watch**

It had been weeks since they had returned back to Tommy's settlement at the dam. Weeks since Joel confessed the lie to Ellie; that he had chosen her over that glimmer of hope for a cure. It hadn't been easy. The lies to Tommy and Maria. The lies to themselves. Pretending that all the Fireflies needed was a few blood samples. Hiding the fact that Joel had been grievously injured at the University or that Ellie had faced a pack of rabid animals worse than any horde of Clickers and Bloaters.

Ellie simply followed Joel's lead when it came to that round of story-time. She played along with the happy horseshit he was feeding them. At first, it was a relief to Joel. _We'll be okay_. But as time wore on, Joel's belief in the lie waned. He had lied, bold-faced to his baby girl. He had shattered her dreams of being a hero to her family and friends who had taken their turn long ago. He had forced her to rationalize his clearly irrational decision, to accept something she didn't want to out of obligation to her surrogate father.

"When do you think they'll come up with a cure?" one of the townspeople asked, beaming at these saviors with total adulation.

Joel and Ellie quickly looked at each other, each unaware how the other would respond. "Well uh.." Joel began, before noticeably pausing.

Ellie quickly interrupted, "IT REALLY DEPENDS on the equipment. Unfortunately, without the technology from, you know, before all this, it's tough to say how long it'll take. But they're working hard on it, and I gave them a whole assload of my blood and skin samples to learn from." _Jesus, Joel, __get it together._

Later that night, getting ready for bed, Joel looked over at Ellie. _Still here. Still helping me feel good about my decision – a decision__ made without any thought of what Ellie might think. __What Tess might think. __What Sarah...__oh God, Sarah..__.could you even forgive me?_

By now, Ellie had developed a sixth sense for Joel. "What?" she asked, feeling his gaze upon her. "You were struggling out there, you geezer. Let me get this straight: you could take out an entire outpost of Fireflies without even a second's hesitation, but can't answer some dumb kid's hilariously cute question about cures and hope without freezing up like a goddamn deer?"

Joel sighed at Ellie's bleak description of "hope." _Great job, you coward, __raising her to be so cynical about __even the possibility of__ hope in this world. _Joel rubbed his eyes.

"I guess this whole lying thing isn't my strong suit. But you know that, don't you?" Absently, he grabbed his watch. For the first time since Ellie met Joel, all those months back in that dilapidated hideout in Boston, he removed his watch and placed it on the nightstand.

Despondently, he looked over at her. "G'nite," Joel whispers as he gets into bed. He hadn't even taken off his backpack. He just laid there, as if in a perpetual state of readiness for the next attack.

The old man was out. Ellie grabbed the watch and silently ran out of the bedroom. She meandered through the grounds, hoping to find someone to help her. She eventually found Tommy at the makeshift bar, nursing a whiskey.

"Hey Tommy...say I were to do something stupid, and try to celebrate Joel's birthday...around when would that be?" Ellie desperately tried to ask Tommy in an innocent way.

Tommy smirked. "Back when he was, you know, human, he used to laugh about having his birthday so goddamn close to Halloween. Used to pull that line at every house on the block and get double candy – and not that bullshit candy corn stuff, I mean the real, honest to goodness full-size Snickers bars." Tommy was almost lost in that moment as he remembered his various costumes growing up – and all those Mischief Nights toilet-papering the school the night before. _"Mischief" night. Jesus._

"Hollow-ween, eh?" She tried to pass that off as tacit agreement, but had so many questions. _Snickers? Is he just making up words now?_ Ellie assumed she had very little time before Joel might wake up. "Haha yeah, that must've been a hoot" Ellie offered, trying to move things along.

"I want to do something nice for Joel, even if it's not anywhere near his birthday right now. But I'm gonna need some help fixing it up," Ellie continued.

"Yeah? What do you have in mind?" Tommy asked, before remembering the one thing Joel always had on him. "Why the fuck did you take that from him?" he snapped, whiskey vapor polluting the air around them.

"I didn't take it, he took it off and put it down. It was just lying there...let me do this for him. He's saved my ass like a million times this year, I just want to show him some gratitude for always watching over me." Ellie's emotions almost overtook her at that moment.

"Look, you might have been through hell with Joel, and Maria might've given you some background on him, but you don't know what that thing means to him. Put it back...there's probably something else you can give him instead."

"But..." Ellie pleaded.

"Ellie, he's my older brother. Even with our time apart, I've known him a long damn time. I was there when he first got that watch. I was there when he broke forever. Leave it be."

Ellie turned away, not sure whether to take Tommy's advice or to do what she always did. Taking all of 3 seconds, she decided to go with the latter.

The next morning, Joel awoke with a start. "Ellie..." he whispered. She wasn't there next to him under his arm as usual. He slowly looked up, dreading something had happened. She was just sitting right next to him, smiling at him like it was Christmas morning.

"What're you grinnin' at, you delinquent?" Joel asked.

"Hardy-fucking-har. Gotcha something. For your birthday," Ellie replied.

"My birth- what?" Joel was so confused he thought he was still dreaming.

"I know it's not for like another 6 months, or whenever the hell Hollow-ween is, but you've earned it." She handed him a box, wrapped in some old pages of some kind of user manual.

He peeled off the paper and opened the box to reveal what dealing hardcore drugs had purchased all those years ago, ticking away for the first time since _she_ laid in his lap. "How the hell did you..."

"Not everything has to stay broken, Joel." He looked back up at those shining green eyes, full of life and wonder, then looked back down at his new watch and began sobbing.


	3. Chapter 3: The Family Portrait

**Chapter 3 – The Family Portrait**

The Maker's burned. Joel hadn't drank much this past year with Ellie, though he lost count of the number of times he wanted to. But this was different. This felt earned.

"And then, Tommy, at this point, he's just piss-ass drunk, I mean, he was falling all over the place, trying to ballroom dance with every girl at the party, spinning them around like he was in some damn movie...I think he damn near dropped every girl there!"

"Jesus, Joel, thank you very much for bringing that up in front of my wife." Maria, Joel, and Ellie laughed hysterically.

Ellie held her glass out, shaking it back and forth and clicking her mouth. "Oh, someone has a taste for whiskey now?" Joel chuckled. "I should've known she ain't no lightweight. I mean, she does pack a mean punch." Ellie smiled at what was essentially the highest possible praise from Joel.

"She's just a kid, Joel, she can't handle more than one," Maria scolded.

Ellie immediately stood up. "Maria, _you_ don't know what I can handle. I've _handled_ plenty. All I've been doing my whole goddamn life is _handling_!"

The room went quiet.

Joel sighed. "She's right." Ellie and Maria looked over at him, not sure what he meant. He looked up at them. "You are just a kid. You're tougher than any kid out there, tougher than most adults." Joel pulled the glass away. "But we're safe now. You don't need to grow up so damn fast any more. You only get to be a kid once Ellie." He looked at Ellie with sadness, thinking about the maturity she'd gained – that she was forced to gain. _No kid should ever have to go through this._

He gulped down his drink and poured another. "You know, Sarah used to complain all the time about me treating her like a kid. She had an edge, you know, a tough-guy personality, like you." Ellie sat back down next to Joel, pleased at this sudden forthrightness about his long-lost daughter.

"She was into rock and roll; yeah, she liked some girly stuff obviously, those corny vampire movies and what not, but she loved rock concerts. She didn't care for long hair, thought it was some _stupid Barbie shit_," Joel imitated her delicate Southern drawl and laughed. "Sarah, oh she had a way about her. She was only 12, but she knew how to make me laugh. How to give me shit and how to take it, too. She didn't have her mother in her life. Just dumb old me. Young, stupid, didn't have a college degree or a whole lot of skills worth a damn back then. She took care of me, you know?" Joel paused.

"I needed her just as much as she needed me. Probably more." He looked downward at his watch, still trying to figure out how Sarah had actually afforded it all those years ago. Or how Ellie managed to fix it up after the goddamn end of the world. _Both of his...daughter__s__...well, they were resourceful as hell. __They were charming; they could probably charm their way into __just about__ anything._

Tommy was struck by how calm Joel was about this conversation. That he brought it up in the first place. The number of times Tommy tried to help Joel arrive at some kind of peace about Sarah but then have it blow up in his face...this was progress, albeit 20 years later.

Joel looked up, smirking at his family. "I can't even imagine the trouble Sarah and Ellie would get into. Jesus, could you imagine them as kids together? Couple of firecrackers taunting boys and bossing around the girls."

The room fell silent again. Ellie enjoyed being compared to Sarah. Any daughter of Joel's must be a real person; someone that wasn't self-involved or petty. She had a lot of wishes about this messed up world, but she knew one of her top ones was that Sarah had never died. Ellie wished Joel never had to go through that pain.

"It's the damnedest thing, you know what I found the other day?" Maria asked. She took out a Polaroid cameras from her bag. "Jesus, that thing was old even back in our day!" exclaimed Tommy. "Does it work?"

"Honey, if I bring it back here to the settlement, then you know it's either fixable or working." Tommy laughed. "Yeah, you don't screw with useless stuff."

"Clearly not..." she said, seductively back at him.

Ellie cleared her throat. "You guys finished being all gross? Let's see what that thing can do!"

"You know, Ellie, you've never been in a photo before, have you?" replied Maria. "Go stand next to Joel."

"Tommy can join us, too" suggested Joel.

"No, I think just the two of you first." Maria pointed to a spot near the lamp for Joel and Ellie to stand near. "Come on, pretend you like each other!" Maria joked. Joel pulled Ellie close to his side, arm draped over her tiny shoulders.

"One, two, three, say cheese!"

"Wait, what?" Ellie was confused by having to say "cheese." Joel roared with laughter. He had come to love opportunities to teach her about the old world, to educate her on the mundane stuff he'd previously taken for granted. "You have got to be the dumbest smart kid ever." Ellie scowled at him for this, but only momentarily.

"Alright, let's see what we have here," Maria said while shaking the photo.

It was perfect. Joel was beaming and looking down at Ellie, while Ellie had a puzzled, curious look on her face, her cut right eyebrow arched upward.

After a few more drinks, and more stories told at Tommy's expense, the four of them decided to turn in. It was getting late, and there was quite a bit of repair work needed at the South gate the next morning thanks to a recent Bandit attack. Ellie walked with Tommy to grab some facial soap and toothpaste from the supply closet, while Joel headed back to his and Ellie's room.

"You know, Joel never wanted kids," begun Tommy. "Me and him, we were about three things growing up: drinking, picking up chicks, and making just enough scratch to get by. Kids, that wasn't for us. They were a nuisance that would just get in the way of the good life." He shook his head at their former lifestyle. "When Sarah was born, it was like a light switch was turned on in his mind. Like that," he snapped his fingers. "When she died, that light just went back off. Getting by with just enough – that was all that mattered any more." He stopped and put his hands on Ellie's shoulders.

"And then? Well, he met you." He snapped his fingers again. "Sorry Ellie-bellie, but I do believe I am shit-faced. I'm going to go home, have some sex, pass out."

"Hah, alright Tommy. Just don't try to ballroom dance with her first dude," Ellie sneered. Tommy raised both his middle fingers, grinning while stumbling backward.

* * *

Ellie had just finished washing up for bedtime. "Damn, your brother can't hold his liquor. Good thing I walked him back. But for me, whiskey doesn't really have any effect. Next time, I'm totally going toe to toe with you!" Joel hadn't said anything this entire time. "Joel?" She hesitated as she saw him sitting quietly on the bed.

Joel was holding both photos in his hands. He had overlapped them, covering the more recent version with his younger self, so that he was in the middle of the combined photo, proudly holding his two daughters.


End file.
